ACOMPANY of Mexican bull-fighters were at this time performing in Sonora every Sunday afternoon. The amphitheater was a large well-built place, erected for the purpose on a small hill behind the street. The arena was about thirty yards in diameter, and enclosed in a very strong six-barred fence, gradually rising from which, all round, were several tiers of seats, shaded from the sun by an awning.
I took the first opportunity of witnessing the spectacle, and found a very large company assembled, among whom the Mexicans and Mexican women in their gay dresses figured conspicuously. A good band of music enlivened the scene till the appointed hour arrived, when the bull-fighters entered the arena. The procession was headed by a clown in a fantastic dress, who acted his part throughout the performances uncommonly well, cracking jokes with his friends among the audience, and singing comic songs. Next came four men on foot, all beautifully dressed in satin jackets and knee-breeches, slashed and embroidered with bright colors. Two horsemen, armed with lances, brought up the rear. After marching round the arena, they stationed themselves in their various places, one of the horsemen being at the sideof the door by which the bull was to enter. The door was then opened, and the bull rushed in, the horseman giving him a poke with his lance as he passed, just to waken him up. The footmen were all waving their red flags to attract his attention, and he immediately charged at one of them; but, the man stepping gracefully aside at the proper moment, the bull passed on and found another red flag waiting for him, which he charged with as little success. For some time they played with the bull in this manner, hopping and skipping about before his horns with so much confidence, and such apparent ease, as to give one the idea that there was neither danger nor difficulty in dodging a wild bull. The bull did not charge so much as he butted, for, almost without changing his ground, he butted quickly several times in succession at the same man. The man, however, was always too quick for him, sometimes just drawing the flag across his face as he stepped aside, or vaulting over his horns and catching hold of his tail before he could turn round.
After this exhibition one of the horsemen endeavored to engage the attention of the bull, and when he charged, received him with the point of his lance on the back of the neck. In this position they struggled against each other, the horse pushing against the bull with all his force, probably knowing that that was his only chance. On one occasion the lance broke, when horse and rider seemed to be at the mercy of the bull, but as quick as lightning the footmen were fluttering their flags in his face and diverting his fury, while the horseman got another lance and returned to the charge.
Shortly afterwards the footmen laid aside theirflags and proceeded to what is considered a more dangerous, and consequently more interesting, part of the performances. They lighted cigars, and were handed small pieces of wood, with a barbed point at one end and a squib at the other. Having lighted his squibs at his cigar, one of their number rushes up in front of the bull, shouting and stamping before him, as if challenging him to come on. The bull is not slow of putting down his head and making at him, when the man vaults nimbly over his horns, leaving a squib fizzing and cracking on each side of his neck. This makes the bull still more furious, but another man is ready for him, who plays him the same trick, and so they go on till his neck is covered with squibs. One of them then takes a large rosette, furnished in like manner with a sharp barbed point, and this, as the bull butts at him, he sticks in his forehead right between the eyes. Another man then engages the bull, and, while eluding his horns, removes the rosette from his forehead. This is considered a still more difficult feat, and was greeted with immense applause, the Mexican part of the audience screaming with delight.
The performers were all uncommonly well made, handsome men; their tight dresses greatly assisted their appearance, and they moved with so much grace, and with such an expression on their countenance of pleasure and confidence, even while making their greatest efforts, that they might have been supposed to be going through the figures of a ballet on the stage, instead of risking death from the horns of a wild bull at every step they executed. During the latter part of the performance, being without their red flags,they were of course in greater danger; but it seemed to make no difference to them; they put a squib in each side of the bull’s neck, while evading his attack, with as much apparent ease as they had dodged him from behind their red flags. Sometimes, indeed, when they were hard pressed, or when attacked by the bull so close to the barrier that they had no room to maneuver round him, they sprang over it in among the spectators.
The next thing in the program was riding the bull, and this was the most amusing scene of all. One of the horsemen lassoes him over the horns, and the other, securing him in his lasso by the hind-leg, trips him up, and throws him without the least difficulty. By keeping the lassoes taut, he is quite helpless. He is then girthed with a rope, and one of the performers, holding on by this gets astride of the prostrate bull in such a way as to secure his seat, when the animal rises. The lassoes are then cast off, when the bull immediately gets up, and, furious at finding a man on his back, plunges and kicks most desperately, jumping from side to side, and jerking himself violently in every way, as he vainly endeavors to bring his horns round so as to reach his rider. I never saw such horsemanship, if horsemanship it could be called; nor did I ever see a horse go through such contortions, or make such spasmodic bounds and leaps: but the fellow never lost his seat, he stuck to the bull as firm as a rock, though thrown about so violently that it seemed enough to jerk the head off his body. During this singular exhibition the spectators cheered and shouted most uproariously, and the bull was maddened to greater fury than ever by the footmenshaking their flags in his face, and putting more squibs on his neck. It seemed to be the grand climax; they had exhausted all means to infuriate the bull to the very utmost, and they were now braving him more audaciously than ever. Had any of them made a slip of the foot, or misjudged his distance but a hairbreadth, there would have been a speedy end of him; but fortunately no such mishap occurred, for the blind rage of the bull was impotent against their coolness and precision.
When the man riding the bull thought he had enough of it, he took an opportunity when the bull came near the outside of the arena, and hopped off his back on to the top of the barrier. A door was then opened, and the bull was allowed to depart in peace. Three or four more bulls in succession were fought in the same manner. The last of them was to have been killed with the sword; but he proved one of those sulky, treacherous animals who do not fight fair; he would not put down his head and charge blindly at anything or everything, but only made a rush now and then, when he thought he had a sure chance. With a bull of this sort there is great danger, while with a furiously savage one there is none at all—so say the bull-fighters; and after doing all they could, without success, to madden and irritate this sulky animal, he was removed, and another one was brought in, who had already shown a requisite amount of blind fury in his disposition.
A long straight sword was then handed to thematador, who, with his flag in his left hand, played with the bull for a little, evading several attacks till he got one to suit him, when, as he stepped asidefrom before the bull’s horns, he plunged the sword into the back of his neck. Without a moan or a struggle the bull fell dead on the instant, coming down all of a heap, in such a way that it was evident that even before he fell he was dead. I have seen cattle butchered in every sort of way, but in none was the transition from life to death so instantaneous.
This was the grand feat of the day, and was thought to have been most beautifully performed. The spectators testified their delight by the most vociferous applause; the Mexican women waved their handkerchiefs, the Mexicans cheered and shouted, and threw their hats in the air, while thematadorwalked proudly round the arena, bowing to the people amid a shower of coin which his particular admirers in their enthusiasm bestowed upon him.
I one day, at some diggings a few miles from Sonora, came across a young fellow hard at work with his pick and shovel, whom I had met several times at Moquelumne Hill and other places. In the course of conversation he told me that he was tired of mining, and intended to practice his profession again; upon which I immediately set him down as either a lawyer or a doctor, there are such lots of them in the mines. I had the curiosity, however, to ask him what profession he belonged to,—“Oh,” he said, “I am a magician, a necromancer, a conjuror!” The idea of a magician being reduced to the level of an ordinary mortal, and being obliged to resort to such a matter-of-fact way of making money as digging gold out of the earth, instead of conjuring it ready coined out of other men’s pockets, appeared to me so very ridiculous that I could not help laughing atthe thought of it. The magician was by no means offended, but joined in the laugh; and for the next hour or more he entertained me with an account of his professional experiences, and the many difficulties he had to encounter in practicing his profession in such a place as the mines, where complete privacy was so hard to be obtained that he was obliged to practice the most secret parts of his mysterious science in all sorts of ragged canvas houses, or else in rooms whose rickety boarded walls were equally ineffectual in excluding the prying gaze of the unwashed. He gave me a great insight into the mysteries of magic, and explained to me how he performed many of his tricks. All the old-fashioned hat-tricks, he said, were quite out of the question in California, where, as no two hats are alike, it would have been impossible to have such an immense assortment ready, from which to select a substitute for any nondescript head-piece which might be given to him to perform upon. I asked him to show me some of his sleight-of-hand tricks, but he said his hands had got so hard with mining that he would have to let them soften for a month or two before he could recover his magical powers.
He was quite a young man, but had been regularly brought up to his profession, having spent several years as confederate to some magician of higher powers in the States—somewhat similar, I presume, to serving an apprenticeship, for when I mentioned the names of several of his professional brethren whose performances I had witnessed, he would say, “Ah, yes, I know him; he was confederate to so-and-so.”
As he intended very soon to resume his practice, hewas on the look-out for a particularly smart boy to initiate as his confederate; and I imagine he had little difficulty in finding one, for, as a general thing, the rising generation of California are supernaturally smart and precocious.
I met here also an old friend in the person of the Scotch gardener who had been my fellow-passenger from New York to Chagres, and who was also one of our party on the Chagres River. He was now farming, having taken up a “ranch” a few miles from Sonora, near a place called Table Mountain, where he had several acres well fenced and cleared, and bearing a good crop of barley and oats, and was busy clearing and preparing more land for cultivation.
This Table Mountain is a very curious place, being totally different in appearance and formation from any other mountain in the country. It is a long range, several miles in extent, perfectly level, and in width varying from fifty yards to a quarter of a mile, having somewhat the appearance, when seen from a distance, of a colossal railway embankment. In height it is below the average of the surrounding mountains; the sides are very steep, sometimes almost perpendicular, and are formed, as is also the summit, of masses of a burned-looking conglomerate rock, of which the component stones are occasionally as large as a man’s head. The summit is smooth, and black with these cinder-like stones; but at the season of the year at which I was there, it was a most beautiful sight, being thickly grown over with a pale-blue flower, apparently a lupin, which so completely covered this long level tract of ground as to give it in the distance the appearance of a sheet of water.No one at that time had thought of working this place, but it has since been discovered to be immensely rich.
A break in this long narrow Table Mountain was formed by a place called Shaw’s Flats, a wide extent of perfectly flat country, four or five miles across, well wooded with oaks, and plentifully sprinkled over with miner’s tents and shanties.
The diggings were rich. The gold was very coarse, and frequently found in large lumps; but how it got there was not easy to conjecture, for the flat was on a level with Table Mountain, and hollows intervened between it and any higher ground. Mining here was quite a clean and easy operation. Any old gentleman might have gone in and taken a turn at it for an hour or two before dinner just to give him an appetite, without even wetting the soles of his boots: indeed, he might have fancied he was only digging in his garden, for the gold was found in the very roots of the grass, and in most parts there was only a depth of three or four feet from the surface to the bedrock, which was of singular character, being composed of masses of sandstone full of circular cavities, and presenting all manner of fantastic forms, caused apparently by the long-continued action of water in rapid motion.
WHILE I was in Sonora, the entire town, with the greater part of the property it contained, was utterly annihilated by fire.
It was about one o’clock in the morning when the fire broke out. I happened to be awake at the time, and at the first alarm I jumped up, and, looking out of my window, I saw a house a short distance up the street on the other side completely enveloped in flames. The street was lighted up as bright as day, and was already alive with people hurriedly removing whatever articles they could from their houses before the fire seized upon them.
I ran downstairs to lend a hand to clear the house, and in the bar-room I found the landlady,en deshabille, walking frantically up and down, and putting her hand to her head as though she meant to tear all her hair out by the roots. She had sense enough left, however, not to do so. A waiter was there also, with just as little of his wits about him; he was chattering fiercely,sacréing very freely, and knocking the chairs and tables about in a wild manner, but not making a direct attempt to save anything. It was ridiculous to see them throwing away so much bodily exertion for nothing, when there was so much to be done, so I set the example by opening the door, andcarrying out whatever was nearest. The other inmates of the house soon made their appearance, and we succeeded in gutting the bar-room of everything movable, down to the bar furniture, among which was a bottle labelled “Quisqui.”
We could save little else, however, for already the fire had reached us. The house was above a hundred yards from where the fire broke out, but from the first alarm till it was in flames scarcely ten minutes elapsed. The fire spread with equal rapidity in the other direction. An attempt was made to save the upper part of the town by tearing down a number of houses some distance in advance of the flames; but it was impossible to remove the combustible materials of which they were composed, and the fire suffered no check in its progress, devouring the demolished houses as voraciously in that state as though they had been left entire.
On the hills, between which lay the town, were crowds of the unfortunate inhabitants, many of whom were but half dressed, and had barely escaped with their lives. One man told me he had been obliged to run for it, and had not even time to take his gold watch from under his pillow.
Those whose houses were so far distant from the origin of the fire as to enable them to do so, had carried out all their movable property, and were sitting among heaps of goods and furniture, confusedly thrown together, watching grimly the destruction of their houses. The whole hillside was lighted up as brightly as a well-lighted room, and the surrounding landscape was distinctly seen by the blaze of the burning town, the hills standing brightly out from the deepblack of the horizon, while overhead the glare of the fire was reflected by the smoky atmosphere.
It was a most magnificent sight, and, more than any fire I had ever witnessed, it impressed one with the awful power and fury of the destroying element. It was not like a fire in a city where man contends with it for the victory, and where one can mark the varied fortunes of the battle as the flames become gradually more feeble under the efforts of the firemen, or again gain the advantage as they reach some easier prey; but here there were no such fluctuations in the prospects of the doomed city—it lay helplessly waiting its fate, for water there was none, and no resistance could be offered to the raging flames, which burned their way steadily up the street, throwing over the houses which still remained intact the flush of supernatural beauty which precedes dissolution, and leaving the ground already passed over covered with the gradually blackening and falling remains of those whose spirit had already departed.
There was an occasional flash and loud explosion, caused by the quantities of powder in some of the stores, and a continual discharge of firearms was heard above the roaring of the flames, from the numbers of loaded revolvers which had been left to their fate along with more valuable property. The most extraordinary sight was when the fire got firm hold of a Jew’s slop-shop; there was then a perfect whirlwind of flame, in which coats, shirts, and blankets were carried up fifty or sixty feet in the air, and became dissolved into a thousand sparkling atoms.
Among the crowds of people on the hillside there was little of the distress and excitement one mighthave expected to see on such an occasion. The houses and stores had been gutted as far as practicable of the property they contained, and all that it was possible to do to save any part of the town had already been attempted, but the hopelessness of such attempts was perfectly evident.
The greater part of the people, it is true, were individuals whose wealth was safe in their buckskin purses, and to them the pleasure of beholding such a grand pyrotechnic display was unalloyed by any greater individual misfortune than the loss of a few articles of clothing; but even those who were sitting hatless and shoeless among the wreck of their property showed little sign of being at all cast down by their disaster; they had more the air of determined men, waiting for the fire to play out its hand before they again set to work to repair all the destruction it had caused.
The fire commenced about half-past one o’clock in the morning, and by three o’clock it had almost burned itself out. Darkness again prevailed, and when day dawned, the whole city of Sonora had been removed from the face of the earth. The ground on which it had stood, now white with ashes, was covered with still smoldering fragments, and the only objects left standing were three large safes belonging to different banking and express companies, with a small remnant of the walls of an adobe house.
People now began to venture down upon the still smoking site of the city, and, seeing an excitement among them at the lower end of the town, I went down to see what was going on. The atmosphere was smoky and stifling, and the ground was almosttoo hot to stand on. The crowd was collected on a place which was known to be very rich, as the ground behind the houses had been worked, and a large amount of gold having been there extracted, it was consequently presumed that under the houses equally good diggings would be found. During the fire, miners had flocked in from all quarters, and among them were some unprincipled vagabonds, who were now endeavoring to take up mining claims on the ground where the houses had stood, measuring off the regular number of feet allowed to each man, and driving in stakes to mark out their claims in the usual manner.
The owners of the houses, however, were “on hand,” prepared to defend their rights to the utmost. Men who had just seen the greater part of their property destroyed were not likely to relinquish very readily what little still remained to them; and now, armed with pistols, guns, and knives, their eyes bloodshot and their faces scorched and blackened, they were tearing up the stakes as fast as the miners drove them in, while they declared very emphatically, with all sorts of oaths, that any man who dared to put a pick into that ground would not live half a minute. And truly a threat from such men was one not to be disregarded.
By the laws of the mines, the diggings under a man’s house are his property, and the law being on their side, the people would have assisted them in defending their rights; and it would not have been absolutely necessary for them to take the trouble of shooting the miscreants, who, as other miners began to assemble on the ground, attracted by the row,found themselves so heartily denounced that they thought it advisable to sneak off as fast as possible.
The only buildings left standing after the fire were a Catholic and a Wesleyan church, which stood on the hill a little off the street, and also a large building which had been erected for a ball-room, or some other public purpose. The proprietor of the principal gambling-saloon, as soon as the fire broke out and he saw that there was no hope for his house, immediately made arrangements for occupying this room, which, from its isolated position, seemed safe enough; and into this place he succeeded in moving the greater part of his furniture, mirrors, chandeliers, and so on. The large sign in front of the house was also removed to the new quarters, and the morning after the fire—but an hour or two after the town had been burned down—the new saloon was in full operation. The same gamblers were sitting at the same tables, dealing monte and faro to crowds of betters; the piano and violin, which had been interrupted by the fire, were now enlivening the people in their distress; and the bar-keeper was as composedly as ever mixing cocktails for the thirsty throats of the million.
No time was lost by the rest of the population. The hot and smoky ground was alive with men clearing away rubbish; others were in the woods cutting down trees and getting out posts and brushwood, or procuring canvas and other supplies from the neighboring camps.
In the afternoon the Phœnix began to rise. Amid the crowds of workers on the long blackened tract of ground which had been the street, posts began here and there to spring up; presently cross-pieces connected them; and before one could look around, the framework was filled in with brushwood. As the ground became sufficiently cool, people began to move down their goods and furniture to where their houses had been, where those who were not yet erecting either a canvas or a brush house, built themselves a sort of pen of boxes and casks of merchandise.
The fire originated in a French hotel, and among the ashes of this house were found the remains of a human body. There was merely the head and trunk, the limbs being entirely burned off. It looked like a charred and blackened log of wood, but the contour of the head and figure was preserved; and it would be hard to conceive anything more painfully expressive of intense agony than the few lines which so powerfully indicated what had been the contorted position of the head, neck, and shoulders of the unfortunate man when he ceased to move. The coroner held an inquest as soon as he could raise a jury out of the crowd, and in the afternoon the body was followed to the grave by several hundred Frenchmen.
This was the only death from the fire which was discovered at the time, but among the ruins of an adobe house, which for some reason was not rebuilt for several weeks afterwards, the remains of another body were found, and were never identified.
As for living on that day, one had to do the best one could with raw materials. Every man had to attend to his own commissariat; and when it was time to think about dinner, I went foraging with a friend among the promiscuous heaps of merchandise, and succeeded in getting some boxes of sardines and a bottle of wine. We were also fortunate enough tofind some hard bread, so we did not fare very badly; and at night we lay down on the bare hillside, and shared that vast apartment with two or three thousand fellow-lodgers. Happy was the man who had saved his blankets,—mine had gone as a small contribution to the general conflagration; but though the nights were agreeably cool, the want of a covering, even in the open air, was not a very great hardship.
The next day the growth of the town was still more rapid. All sorts of temporary contrivances were erected by the storekeepers and hotel-keepers on the sites of their former houses. Every man was anxious to let the public see that he was “on hand,” and carrying on business as before. Sign-painters had been hard at work all night, and now huge signs on yard-wide strips of cotton cloth lined each side of the street, in many cases being merely laid upon the ground, where as yet nothing had been erected whereon to display them. These canvas and brush houses were only temporary. Every one, as soon as lumber could be procured, set to work to build a better house than the one he had lost; and within a month Sonora was in all respects a finer town than it had been before the fire.
ON the 4th of July I went over to Columbia, four miles distant from Sonora, where there were to be great doings, as the latter place had hardly yet recovered from the effects of the fire, and was still in a state of transition. So Columbia, which was nearly as large a town, was to be the place of celebration for all the surrounding country.
Early in the forenoon an immense concourse of people had assembled to take part in the proceedings, and were employing themselves in the meantime in drinking success to the American eagle, in the numerous saloons and bar-rooms. The town was all stars and stripes; they fluttered over nearly every house, and here and there hung suspended across the street. The day was celebrated in the usual way, with a continual discharge of revolvers, and a vast expenditure of powder and squibs and crackers, together with an unlimited consumption of brandy. But this was only the overflowing of individual enthusiasm; the regular program was a procession, a prayer, and an oration.
The procession was headed by about half-a-dozen ladies and a number of children—the teachers and pupils of a school—who sang hymns at intervals, when the brass band which accompanied them had blownthemselves out of breath. They were followed by the freemasons, to the number of a hundred or so, in their aprons and other paraphernalia; and after them came a company of about the same number of horsemen, the most irregular cavalry one could imagine. Whoever could get a four-legged animal to carry him, joined the ranks; and horses, mules, and jackasses were all mixed up together. Next came the hook and ladder company, dragging their hooks and ladders after them in regular firemen fashion; and after them came three or four hundred miners, walking two and two, and dragging, in like manner, by a long rope, a wheelbarrow, in which were placed a pick and shovel, a frying-pan, an old coffee-pot, and a tin cup. They were marshalled by half-a-dozen miners, with long-handled shovels over their shoulders, and all sorts of ribbons tied round their old hats to make a show.
Another mob of miners brought up the rear, drawing after them a long tom on a pair of wheels. In the tom was a lot of “dirt,” which one man stirred up with his shovel, as if he were washing, while a number of others alongside were hard at work throwing in imaginary shovelfuls of dirt.
The idea was pretty good; but to understand the meaning of this gorgeous pageant, it was necessary to be familiar with mining life. The pick and shovel in the wheelbarrow were the emblems of the miners’ trade, while the old pots and pans were intended to signify the very rough style of his domestic life, particularly of hiscuisine; and the party of miners at work around the long tom was a representation of the way in which the wealth of the country is wrested from it by all who have stout hearts and willinghands, or stout hands and willing hearts—it amounts to much the same thing.
The procession paraded the streets for two or three hours, and proceeded to the bull-ring, where the ceremonies were to be performed. The bull-ring here was neither so large nor so well got up as the one at Sonora, but still it could accommodate a very large number of people. As the miners entered the arena with their wheelbarrow and long tom, they were immensely cheered by the crowds who had already taken their seats, the band in the meantime playing “Hail Columbia” most lustily.
The Declaration of Independence was read by a gentleman in a white neckcloth, and the oration was then delivered by the “orator of the day,” who was a pale-faced, chubby-cheeked young gentleman, with very white and extensive shirt-collars. He indulged in a great deal of buncombe about the Pilgrim Fathers, and Plymouth Rock, the “Blarney-stone of America,” as the Americans call it. George the Third and his “red-coated minions” were alluded to in not very flattering terms; and after having exhausted the past, the orator, in his enthusiasm, became prophetic of the future. He fancied he saw a distant vision of a great republic in Ireland, England sunk into insignificance, and all the rest of it.
The speech was full of American and local phraseology, but the richness of the brogue was only the more perceptible from the vain attempt to disguise it. Many of the Americans sitting near me seemed to think that the orator was piling up the agony a little too high, and signified their disapprobation by shouting “Gaas, gaas!” My next neighbor, an oldYankee, informed me that, in his opinion, “them Pilgrim Fathers were no better than their neighbors; they left England because they could not have everything their own way, and in America were more intolerant of other religions than any one had been of theirs in England. I know all about ’em,” he said, “for I come from right whar they lived.”
In the middle of the arena, during the ceremonies, was a cage containing a grizzly bear, who had fought and killed a bull by torchlight the night before. His cage was boarded up, so that he was deprived of the pleasure of seeing what was going on, but he could hear all that was said, and expressed his opinion from time to time by grunting and growling most savagely.
After the oration, the company dispersed to answer the loud summons of the numerous dinner-bells and gongs, and in the afternoon there was a bull-fight, which went off with greatéclat.
It was announced in the bills that the celebrated lady bull-fighter, the Señorita Ramona Perez, would despatch a bull with the sword. This celebrated señorita, however, turned out to be only the chiefmatador, who entered the arena very well got up as a woman, with the slight exception of a very fine pair of mustaches, which he had not thought it worth while to sacrifice. He had a fan in his hand, with which he half concealed his face, as if from modesty, as he curtseyed to the audience, who received him with shouts of laughter—mixed with hisses and curses, however, for there were some who had been true believers in the señorita; but the infidels were the majority, and, thinking it a good joke,enjoyed it accordingly. The señorita played with the bull for some little time with the utmost audacity, and with a great deal of feminine grace, whisking her petticoats in the bull’s face with one hand, whilst she smoothed down her hair with the other. At last the sword was handed to her, which she received very gingerly, also a red flag; and after dodging a few passes from the bull, she put the sword most gracefully into the back of his neck, and, hardly condescending to wait to see whether she had killed or not, she dropped both sword and flag, and ran out of the arena, curtsying, and kissing her hand to the spectators, after the manner of a ballet-dancer leaving the stage.
It was a pity the fellow had not shaved off his mustache, as otherwise his acting was so good that one might have deluded oneself with the belief that it was really the celebrated señorita herself who was risking her precious life by such a very ladylike performance.
I had heard from many persons of two natural bridges on a small river called Coyote Creek, some twelve miles off; and as they were represented as being very curious and beautiful objects, I determined to pay them a visit. Accordingly, returning to M’Lean’s Ferry on the Stanislaus, at the point where Coyote Creek joins that river, I traveled up the Creek for some miles, clambering over rocks and winding round steep overhanging banks, by a trail so little used that it was hardly discernible. I was amply repaid for my trouble, however, when, after an hour or two of hard climbing in the roasting hot sun, I at last reached the bridges, and found themmuch more beautiful natural curiosities than I had imagined them to be.
Having never been able to get any very intelligible account of what they really were, I had supposed that some large rocks rolling down the mountain had got jammed over the creek, by the steepness of the rocky banks on each side, which I fancied would be a very easy mode of building a natural bridge. My idea, however, was very far from the reality. In fact, bridges was an inappropriate name; they should rather have been called caves or tunnels. How they were formed is a question for geologists; but their appearance gave the idea that there had been a sort of landslip, which blocked up the bed of the creek for a distance of two or three hundred feet, and to the height of fifty or sixty above the bed of the stream. They were about a quarter of a mile apart, and their surface was, like that of the hills, perfectly smooth, and covered with grass and flowers. The interiors were somewhat the same style of place, but the upper one was the larger and more curious of the two. The faces of the tunnel were perpendicular, presenting an entrance like a church door, about twelve feet high, surrounded by huge stony fungus-like excrescences, of a dark purple-and-green color. The waters of the creek flowed in here, and occupied all the width of the entrance. They were only a few inches in depth, and gave a perfect reflection of the whole of the interior, which was a lofty chamber some hundred feet in length, the straight sides of which met at the top in the form of a Gothic arch. At the further end was a vista ofsimilarly arched small passages, branching off into darkness. The walls were deeply carved into pillars and grotesque forms, in which one could trace all manner of fanciful resemblances; while at the base of some of the columns were most symmetrically formed projections, many of which might be taken for fonts, the top of them being a circular basin containing water. These projections were of stone, and had the appearance of having congealed suddenly while in a boiling state. There was a beautiful regularity in the roughness of their surface, some of the rounded forms being deeply carved with circular lines, similar to the engine-turning on the back of a watch, and others being rippled like a shirt of mail, the rippling getting gradually and regularly finer, till at the top the surface was hardly more rough than that of a file. The walls and roof seemed to have been smothered over with some stuff which had hardened into a sort of cement, presenting a polished surface of a bright cream-color, tinged here and there with pink and pale-green. The entrance was sufficiently large to light up the whole place, which, from its general outline, gave somewhat the idea of a church; for, besides the pillars, with their flowery ornaments, the Gothic arches and the fonts, there was at one side, near the entrance, one of these stone excrescences much larger than the others, which would have passed for a pulpit, overhung as it was by a projection of a similar nature, spreading out from the wall several feet above it.
The sides of the arches forming the roof did not quite meet at the top, but looked like the crests oftwo immense foaming waves, between which were seen the extremities of numbers of pendants of a like flowery form.
There was nothing rough or uncertain about the place; every part seemed as if it were elaborately finished, and in strict harmony with the whole; and as the rays of the setting sun fell on the water within the entrance, and reflected a subdued light over the brilliant hues of the interior, it looked like a gorgeous temple, which no art could improve, and such as no human imagination could have designed. At the other end of the tunnel the water emerged from a much smaller cave, which was so low as not to admit of a man crawling in.
The caves, at each end of the other tunnel, were also very small, though the architecture was of the same flowery style. The faces of it, however, were extremely beautiful. To the height of fifty or sixty feet they presented a succession of irregular overhanging projections, bulging out like immense mushrooms, of which the prevailing hue was a delicate pink, with occasional patches of bright green.
In any part of the Old World such a place would be the object of a pilgrimage; and even where it was, it attracted many visitors, numbers of whom had, according to the established custom of snobhood, acknowledged their own insignificance, and had sought a little immortality for their wretched names by scratching them on a large smooth surface by the side of the entrance to the cave.
While I was there, an old Yankee miner came to see the place. He paid a very hurried visit—he had not even time to scratch his initials; but he wasenthusiastic in his admiration of this beautiful object of nature, which, however, he thought was quite thrown away in such an out-of-the-way part of creation. It distressed him to think that such a valuable piece of property could not be turned to any profitable account. “Now,” said he, “if I had this here thing jist about ten miles from New York City, I’d show it to the folks at twenty-five cents a head, and make an everlastin’ pile of money out of it.”
THE only miners on the Creek were Frenchmen, two or three of whom lived in a very neat log cabin, close to the tunnel. Behind it was a small kitchen-garden in a high state of cultivation, and alongside was a very diminutive fac-simile of the cabin itself, which was tenanted by a knowing-looking little terrier-dog.
The whole establishment had a finished and civilized air about it, and was got up with a regard to appearances which was quite unusual.
But of all the men of different nations in the mines, the French were most decidedly those who, judging from their domestic life, appeared to be most at home. Not that they were a bit better than others able to stand the hard work and exposure and privations, but about all their huts and cabins, however roughly constructed they might be, there was something in the minor details which bespoke more permanency than was suggested by the generality of the rude abodes of the miners. It is very certain that, without really expending more time or labor, or even taking more trouble than other men about their domestic arrangements, they did “fix things up” with such a degree of taste, and with so much method about everything, as to give the idea that their lifeof toil was mitigated by more than a usual share of ease and comfort.
A backwoodsman from the Western States is in some respects a good sort of fellow to be with in the mountains, especially where there are hostile Indians about, for he knows their ways, and can teach them manners with his five-foot-barrel rifle when there is occasion for it; he can also put up a log cabin in no time, and is of course up to all the dodges of border life; but this is his normal condition, and he cannot be expected to appreciate so much as others, or to be so apt at introducing, all the little luxuries of a more civilized existence of which he has no knowledge.
An old sailor is a useful man in the mines, when you can keep brandy out of his reach; and, to do him justice, there is method in his manner of drinking. He lives under the impression that all human existence should be subdivided, as at sea, into watches; for when ashore he only lengthens their duration, and takes his watch below as a regular matter of duty, keeping below as long as the grog lasts; after which he comes on deck again, quite refreshed, and remains as sober as a judge for two or three weeks. His useful qualities, however, consist in the extraordinary delight he takes in patching and mending, and tinkering up whatever stands in need of such service. He is great at sweeping and scrubbing, and keeping things clean generally, and, besides, knows something of tailoring, shoemaking, carpentering; in fact, he can turn his hand to anything, and generally does it artistically, while his resources are endless, for he has a peculiar genius for making one thing serve the purpose of another, and is never at a loss for a substitute.
But whatever the specialties and accomplishments of individuals or of classes, the French, as a nation, were excelled by no other in the practice of the art of making themselves personally comfortable. They generally located themselves in considerable numbers, forming small communities of their own, and always appeared to be jolly, and enjoying themselves. They worked hard enough while they were at it, but in their intervals of leisure they gave themselves up to what seemed at least to be a more unqualified enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment than other miners, who never entirely laid aside the earnest and careworn look of the restless gold-hunter.
This enviable faculty, which the Frenchmen appeared to possess in such a high degree, of bringing somewhat of the comforts of civilized life along with them, was no doubt a great advantage; but whether it operated favorably or otherwise towards their general success as miners, is not so certain. One would naturally suppose that the more thoroughly a man rested from mental or bodily labor, the more able would he be for renewed exertions; but at the same time, a man whose mind is entirely engrossed and preoccupied with one idea, is likely to attain his end before the man who only devotes himself to the pursuit of that object at stated intervals.
However that may be, there is no question that, as miners, the French were far excelled by the Americans and by the English—for they are inseparably mixed up together. There are thorough-going Americans who, only a year or two ago, were her Majesty’s most faithful subjects, and who still intheir hearts cherish the recollection. The Frenchmen, perhaps, possessed industry and energy enough, if they had had a more practical genius to direct it; but in proportion to their numbers, they did not bear a sufficiently conspicuous part, either in mining operations, or in those branches of industry which have for their object the converting of the natural advantages of a country to the service of man. The direction of their energies was more towards the supplying of those wants which presuppose the existence of a sufficiently wealthy and luxurious class of consumers than towards seizing on such resources of the country as offered them the means of enriching themselves in a manner less immediately dependent on their neighbors.
Even as miners, they for the most part congregated round large camps, and were never engaged in the same daring undertakings as the Americans—such as lifting half a mile of a large river from its bed, or trenching for miles the sides of steep mountains, and building lofty viaducts supported on scaffolding which, from its height, looked like a spider’s web; while the only pursuits they engaged in, except mining, were the keeping of restaurants, estaminets, cafés chantants, billiard-rooms, and such places, ministering more to the pleasures than to the necessities of man; and not in any way adding to the wealth of the country by rendering its resources more available.
Comparing the men of different nations, the pursuit they were engaged in, and the ends they had accomplished, one could not help being impressed with the idea that if the mines had been peopledentirely by Frenchmen—if all the productive resources of the country had been in their hands—it would yet have been many years before they would have raised California to the rank and position of wealth and importance which she now holds.
And it is quite fair to draw a general conclusion regarding them, based upon such evidences of their capabilities as they afforded in California; for not only did they form a very considerable proportion of the population, but, as among people of other nations, there were also among them men of all classes.
In many respects they were a most valuable addition to the population of the country, especially in the cities, but as colonizers and subjugators of a new country, their inefficiency was very apparent. They appeared to want that daring and independent spirit of individual self-reliance which impels an American or Englishman to disregard all counsel and companionship, and to enter alone into the wildest enterprise, so long as he himself thinks it feasible; or, disengaging himself for the time being from all communication with his fellow-men, to plunge into the wilderness, and there to labor steadily, uncheered by any passing pleasure, and with nothing to sustain him in his determination but his own confidence in his ability ultimately to attain his object.
One scarcely ever met a Frenchman traveling alone in search of diggings; whereas the Americans and English whom one encountered were nearly always solitary individuals, “on their own hook,” going to some distant part where they had heard the diggings were good, but at the same time ready to stop anywhere, or to change their destination according to circumstances.
The Frenchmen were too gregarious; they were either found in large numbers, or not at all. They did not travel about much, and, when they did, were in parties of half-a-dozen. While Americans would travel hundreds of miles to reach a place which they believed to be rich, the great object of the Frenchmen, in their choice of a location, seemed to be, to be near where a number of their countrymen were already settled.
But though they were so fond of each other’s company, they did not seem to possess that cohesiveness and mutual confidence necessary for the successful prosecution of a joint undertaking. Many kinds of diggings could only be worked to advantage by companies of fifteen or twenty men, but Frenchmen were never seen attempting such a combination. Occasionally half-a-dozen or so worked together, but even then the chances were that they squabbled among themselves, and broke up before they had got their claim into working order, and so lost their labor from their inability to keep united in one plan of operation.
In this respect the Americans had a very great advantage, for, though strongly imbued with the spirit of individual independence, they are certainly of all people in the world the most prompt to organize and combine to carry out a common object. They are trained to it from their youth in their innumerable, and to a foreigner unintelligible, caucus-meetings, committees, conventions, and so forth, by means of which they bring about the election of everyofficer in the State, from the President down to the policeman; while the fact of every man belonging to a fire company, a militia company, or something of that sort, while it increases their idea of individual importance, and impresses upon them the force of combined action, accustoms them also to the duty of choosing their own leaders, and to the necessity of afterwards recognizing them as such by implicit obedience.
Certain it is that, though the companies of American miners were frequently composed of what seemed to be most incongruous materials—rough, uneducated men, and men of refinement and education—yet they worked together as harmoniously in carrying out difficult mining and engineering operations, under the directions of their “captain,” as if they had been a gang of day-laborers who had no right to interfere as to the way in which the work should be conducted.
The captain was one of their number, chosen for his supposed ability to carry out the work; but if they were not satisfied with his performances, it was a very simple matter to call a meeting, at which the business of deposing, or accepting the resignation of the incompetent officer, and appointing a successor, was put through with all the order and formality which accompanies the election of a president of any public body. Those who would not submit to the decision of the majority might sell out, but the prosecution of a work undertaken was never abandoned or in any way retarded by the discordance of opinion on the part of the different members of the company.
Individuals could not work alone to any advantage. All mining operations were carried on by parties of men, varying in number according to thenature of their diggings; and the strange assortment of dissimilar characters occasionally to be found thus brought into close relationship was but a type of the general state of society, which was such as completely to realize the idea of perfect social equality.
There are occasions on which, among small communities, an overwhelming emotion, common to all, may obliterate all feeling of relative superiority; but the history of the world can show no such picture of human nature upon the same scale as was to be seen in the mines, where, among a population of hundreds of thousands of men, from all parts of the world, and from every order of society, no individual or class was accounted superior to another.
The cause of such a state of things was one which would tend to produce the same results elsewhere. It consisted in this, that each man enjoyed the capability of making as much money as his neighbor; for hard labor, which any man could accomplish with legs and arms, without much assistance from his head, was as remunerative as any other occupation—consequently, all men indiscriminately were found so employing themselves, and mining or any other kind of labor was considered as dignified and as honorable a pursuit as any other.
In fact, so paramount was this idea, that in some men it created an impression that not to labor was degrading—that those who did not live by actual physical toil were men who did not come up to the scratch—who rather shirked the common lot of all, “man’s original inheritance, that he should sweat for his poor pittance.” I recollect once arriving in the middle of the night in San Francisco, when it wasnot by any means the place it now is, and finding all the hotels full, I was compelled to take refuge in an establishment which offered no other accommodation to the public than a lot of beds—half-a-dozen in a room. When I was paying my dollar in the morning for having enjoyed the privilege of sleeping on one of these concerns, an old miner was doing the same. He had no coin, but weighed out an ounce of dust, and while getting his change he seemed to be studying the keeper of the house, as a novel and interesting specimen of human nature. The result showed itself in an expression of supreme contempt on his worn and sunburnt features, as he addressed the object of his contemplation: “Say now, stranger, do you do nothin’ else but just sit thar and take a dollar from every man that sleeps on them beds?”
“Yes, that’s my business,” replied the man.
“Well, then,” said the miner after a little further reflection, “it’s a d—d mean way of making your living, that’s all I can say.”
This idea was natural enough to the man who so honestly expressed it, but it was an exaggeration of that which prevailed in the mines, for no occupation gave any man a superiority over his neighbors; there was no social scale in which different classes held different positions, and the only way in which a man could distinguish himself from others was by what he actually had in him, by his own personal qualities, and by the use he could make of them; and any man’s intrinsic merit it was not difficult to discover; for it was not as in countries where the whole population is divided into classes, and where individuals from widely different stations are, when throwntogether, prevented, by a degree of restraint and hypocrisy on both sides, from exhibiting themselves exactly as they would to their ordinary associates. Here no such obstacle existed to the most unreserved intercourse; the habitual veil of imposition and humbug, under which men usually disguise themselves from the rest of the world, was thrown aside as a useless inconvenience. They took no trouble to conceal what passed within them, but showed themselves as they were, for better or for worse as the case might be—sometimes, no doubt, very much for the worse; but in most instances first impressions were not so favorable as those formed upon further acquaintance.
Society—so to call it—certainly wanted that super-fine polish which gives only a cold reflection of what is offered to it. There was no pinchbeck or Brummagem ware; every man was a genuine solid article, whether gold, silver, or copper: he was the same sterling metal all the way through which he was on the surface; and the generous frankness and hearty goodwill which, however roughly expressed, were the prevailing characteristics of the miners, were the more grateful to the feelings, as one knew that no secondary or personal motive sneaked beneath them.
It would be hard to say what particular class of men was the most numerous in the mines, because few retained any distinguishing characteristic to denote their former position.
The backwoodsman and the small farmer from the Western States, who formed a very large proportion of the people, could be easily recognized by many peculiarities. The educated man, who had lived and moved among gentlemen, was also to be detectedunder any disguise; but the great mass of the people were men who, in their appearance and manners, afforded little clue to their antecedents.
From the mode of life and the style of dress, men became very much assimilated in outward appearance, and acquired also a certain individuality of manner, which was more characteristic of what they now were—of the independent gold-hunter—than of any other order of mankind.
It was easy enough, if one had any curiosity on the subject, to learn something of a man’s history, for there was little reserve used in alluding to it. What a man had been mattered as little to him as it did to any one else; and it was refreshing to find, as was generally the case, that one’s preconceived ideas of a man were so utterly at variance with the truth.
Among such a motley crowd one could select his own associates, but the best-informed, the most entertaining, and those in many respects the most desirable, were not always those whose company one could have enjoyed where the inseparable barriers of class are erected;—and it is difficult to believe that any one, after circulating much among the different types of mankind to be found in the mines, should not have a higher respect than before for the various classes which they represented.
AFTER a month or two spent on the Tuolumne and Merced rivers, and in the more sparsely populated section of country lying still farther south, I returned to Sonora, on my way to San Francisco.
Here I took the stage for Stockton—a large open wagon, drawn by five horses, three leaders abreast. We were well ballasted with about a dozen passengers, the most amusing of whom was a hard, dried-up man, dressed in a greasy old leathern hunting-shirt, and inexpressibles to match, all covered with tags and fringes, and clasping in his hand a long rifle, which had probably been his bosom-friend all his life. He took an early opportunity of informing us all that he was from Arkansas; that he came to “Calaforny” across the plains, and having been successful in the diggings, he was now on his way home. He was like a schoolboy going home for the holidays, so delighted was he with the prospect before him. It seemed to surprise him very much that all the rest of the party were not also bound for Arkansas, and he evidently looked upon us, in consequence, with a degree of compassionate interest, as much less fortunate mortals, and very much to be pitied.
We started at four o’clock in the morning, so as to accomplish the sixty or seventy miles to Stockton before the departure of the San Francisco steamer. The first ten or twelve miles of our journey were consequently performed in the dark, but that did not affect our speed; the road was good, and it was only in crossing the hollows between the hills that the navigation was difficult; for in such places the diggings had frequently encroached so much on the road as to leave only sufficient space for a wagon to pass between the miners’ excavations.
We drove about thirty miles before we were quite out of the mining regions. The country, however, became gradually less mountainous, and more suitable for cultivation, and every half-mile or so we passed a house by the roadside, with ploughed fields around it, whose occupant combined farming with tavern-keeping. This was all very pleasant traveling, but the most wretched part of the journey was when we reached the plains. The earth was scorched and baked, the heat was more oppressive than in the mountains, and for about thirty miles we moved along enveloped in a cloud of dust, which soaked into one’s clothes and hair and skin as if it had been a liquid substance. On our arrival in Stockton we were of a uniform color all over—all identity of person was lost as much as in a party of chimney-sweeps; but fortunately the steamer did not start for an hour, so I had time to take a bath, and make myself look somewhat like a white man before going on board.
The Stockton steamboats, though not so large as those which run to Sacramento, were not inferior inspeed. We steamed down the San Joaquin at about twenty miles an hour, and reached San Francisco at ten o’clock at night.
San Francisco retained now but little resemblance to what it had been in its earlier days. The same extraordinary contrasts and incongruities were not to be seen either in the people or in the appearance of the streets. Men had settled down into their proper places; the various branches of business and trade had worked for themselves their own distinct channels; and the general style of the place was very much the same as that of any flourishing commercial city.
It had increased immensely in extent, and its growth had been in all directions. The barren sandhills which surrounded the city had been graded down to an even slope, and were covered with streets of well-built houses, and skirted by populous suburbs. Four or five wide streets, more than a mile in length, built up with solid and uniform brick warehouses, stretched all along in front of the city, upon ground which had been reclaimed from the bay; and between these and the upper part of the city was the region of fashionable shops and hotels, banks and other public offices.
The large fleet of ships which for a long time, while seamen’s wages were exorbitantly high, lay idly in the harbor, was now dispersed, and all the shipping actually engaged in discharging cargo found accommodation alongside of the numerous piers which had been built out for nearly a mile into the bay. All manner of trades and manufactures were flourishing as in a place a hundred years old. Omnibuses plied upon the principal thoroughfares, and numbers ofsmall steamboats ran to the watering-places which had sprung up on the opposite shore.
The style of life had improved with the growth of the city, and with the increased facilities of procuring servants and house-room. The ordinary conventionalities of life were observed, and public opinion exercised its wonted control over men’s conduct; for the female part of creation was so numerously represented that births and marriages occupied a space in the daily papers larger than they require in many more populous places.
Female influence was particularly observable in the great attention men paid to their outward appearance. There was but little of the independent taste and individuality in dress of other days; all had succumbed to the sway of the goddess of fashion, and the usual style of gentleman’s dress was even more elaborate than in New York. All classes had changed, to a certain extent, in this respect. The miner, as he is seen in the mines, was not to be met with in San Francisco; he attired himself in suitable raiment in Sacramento or Stockton before venturing to show himself in the metropolis.
Gambling was decidedly on the wane. Two or three saloons were still extant, but the company to be found in them was not what it used to be. The scum of the population was there; but respectable men, with a character to lose, were chary of risking it by being seen in a public gambling-room; and, moreover, the greater domestic comfort which men enjoyed, and the usual attractions of social life, removed all excuse for frequenting such places.
Public amusements were of a high order. Biscaccianti and Catherine Hayes were giving concerts, Madame Anne Bishop was singing in English opera, and the performances at the various theaters were sustained by the most favorite actors from the Atlantic States.
Extravagant expenditure is a marked feature in San Francisco life. The same style of ostentation, however, which is practiced in older countries, is unattainable in California, and in such a country would entirely fail in its effect. Extravagance, accordingly, was indulged more for the purpose of procuring tangible enjoyment than for the sake of show. Men spent their money in surrounding themselves with the best of everything, not so much for display as from due appreciation of its excellence; for there is no city of the same size or age where there is so little provincialism; the inhabitants, generally, are eminently cosmopolitan in their character, and judge of merit by the highest standard.
As yet, the influence of California upon this country [England] is not so much felt by direct communication as through the medium of the States. A very large proportion of the English goods consumed in the country find their way there through the New York market, and in many cases in such a shape, as in articles manufactured in the States from English materials, that the actual value of the trade cannot be accurately estimated. The tide of emigration from this country to California follows very much the same course. The English are there, very numerous, but those direct from England bear but an exceedingly small proportion to those from the United States, from New South Wales, and other countries; and thelatter, no doubt, possessed a great advantage, for, without undervaluing the merit of English mechanics and workmen in their own particular trade, it must be allowed that the same class of Americans are less confined to one speciality, and have more general knowledge of other trades, which makes them better men to be turned adrift in a new country, where they may have to employ themselves in a hundred different ways before they find an opportunity of following the trade to which they have been brought up. An English mechanic, after a few years’ experience of a younger country, without losing any of the superiority he may possess in his own trade, becomes more fitted to compete with the rest of the world when placed in a position where that speciality is unavailable.
California has afforded the Americans their first opportunity of showing their capacity as colonists. The other States which have of late years been added to the Union, are not a fair criterion, for they have been created merely by the expansion of the outer circumference of civilization, by the restlessness of the backwoodsman unaided by any other class; but the attractions offered by California were such as to draw to it a complete ready-made population of active and capable men, of every trade and profession.
The majority of men went there with the idea of digging gold, or without any definite idea of how they would employ themselves; but as the wants of a large community began to be felt, the men were already at hand capable of supplying them; and the result was, that in many professions, and in all the various branches of mechanical industry, the same degree of excellence was exhibited as is known in any part of the world.
Certainly no new country ever so rapidly advanced to the same high position as California; but it is equally true that no country ever commenced its career with such an effective population, or with the same elements of wealth to work upon. There are circumstances, however, connected with the early history of the country which may not appear to be so favorable to immediate prosperity and progress. Other new countries have been peopled by gradual accessions to an already formed center, from which the rest of the mass received character and consistency; but in the case of California the process was much more abrupt. Thousands of men, hitherto unknown to each other, and without mutual relationship, were thrown suddenly together, unrestrained by conventional or domestic obligations, and all more intently bent than men usually are upon the one immediate object of acquiring wealth. It is to be wondered that chaos and anarchy were not at first the result of such a state of things; but such was never the case in any part of the country; and it is, no doubt, greatly owing to the large proportion of superior men among the early settlers, and to the capacity for self-government possessed by all classes of Americans, that a system of government was at once organized and maintained, and that the country was so soon entitled to rank as one of the most important States of the Union.
The consequences to the rest of the world of the gold of California it is not easy to determine, and it is not for me to enter upon the great question as tothe effect on prices of an addition to the quantity of precious metals in the world of £250,000,000, which in round numbers is the estimated amount of gold and silver produced within the last eight years.[6]It seems, however, more than probable that the present high range of prices may, to a certain extent, be caused by this immense addition to our stock of gold and silver. But the question becomes more complicated when we consider the extraordinary impetus given to commerce and manufactures by this sudden production of gold acting simultaneously with the equally expanding influence of Free Trade. The time cannot be far off when this important investigation must be entered upon with all that talent which can be brought to bear upon it. But this is the domain of philosophers, and of those whose part in life it is to do the deep-thinking for the rest of the world. I have no desire to trespass on such ground, and abstain also from fruitlessly wandering in the endless mazes of the Currency question.
There are other thoughts, however, which cannot but arise on considering the modern discoveries of gold. When we see a new country and a new home provided for our surplus population, at a time when it was most required—when a fresh supply of gold, now a necessary to civilization, is discovered, as we were evidently and notoriously becoming so urgently in want of it, we cannot but recognize the ruling hand of Providence. And when we see the uttermost parts of the earth suddenly attracting such an immense population of enterprising, intelligent, earnest Anglo-Saxon men, forming, with a rapidity which seemsmiraculous, new communities and new powers such as California and Australia, we must indeed look upon this whole Golden Legend as one of the most wondrous episodes in the history of mankind.
THE END.
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY—NEW YORK
OUTING ADVENTURE LIBRARY